A Journey to Inner Peace

Beware, you’re gonna melt!

In the Disney movie Frozen, snowman Olaf desperately yearns for summer. And he dreams about all the lovely things he would do in summer. Like lazing on the beach with a drink in his hand, getting a suntan. Oh, and he can’t wait to see what his buddies will think of him. He is sure he will be so much cooler in summer.

He is not aware that he will melt.

That is a funny metaphor for the spiritual seeker who dreams about what enlightenment will do for him, but is not aware that the former familiar sense of self will be lost on the journey.
(Watch the really cute song In Summer here, 2 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFatVn1hP3o)

There are a few films with spiritual messages. One of my favourites is Its A Wonderful Life with James Stewart in which he is shown how his life has affected others. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illyich is a novella which shows even on the point of death a person can have a change of heart!

Yes, this analogy goes pretty far. Except that water is the same 3d dimension as snow and the snowman. It would be better if water were in the 4th dimension, like awareness is a higher dimension for the 3d world.
There are more analogies in this short youtube clip. I love how he sings,
winter is a good time to stay inside and cuddle,
but put me in summer and I’ll be a …[then he stops and looks at a puddle, so both the rhyme and picture suggest that he says ‘puddle’ now, but he just steps over it and continues] …happy snowman.
Perfect denial of some signs along the way.

And at the end, his friend says, I’m gonna tell him. And the other replies , Don’t you dare.
That is like the discussion in Buddhism. Can we tell students that they will lose the self? Oh, well, uhm, maybe let’s shut up about this. Let’s not go for truth, let’s just talk about compassion for today.

Amazing how much you can get out of a movie when you view it from different perspectives. I guess that’s what separates normal movies from the great ones.

Kind of Like Abraham Hicks. They appeal to all the “me’s” that want things that will evenetually make them happy. But in order to manifest things, the “me” has to get out of the way…and poof, instant enlightenment, without having to manifest a single object 🙂

I like this metaphor, too. One idea that came to mind is that suffering is unavoidable. If we were to pretend that Olaf could avoid melting in the summer, he might discover some things about summer that he dislikes which he did not expect, like insects, as an example. That reminds me of people who seek the spiritual path and expect to feel nothing but blissful and positive all the time, or when we get really excited about something happening in the future and fail to think of the challenges it may bring us. I think it’s great to get excited and look forward to positive things that might happen, but it just makes me think of the human tendency to resist and avoid pain rather than embracing or accepting it.

Yes, that is a good point. Suffering seems unavoidable. That is, the challenges don’t stop. It is just that we are not affected so much by them.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. It is great to have an exchange of experiences with you here.